Kritsy Berington guides one of her dogs through a vet check. Schwing/KUAC

Head Veterinarian, Kathleen McGill is checking over one of rookie musher Kristy Berington’s dogs.  Copper is clearly named for his color.  He has dark brown eyes.  He is a little nervous.

“We’re gonna look at his teeth and his gums first.  He’s got nice pink gums and his teeth look really good.  No infections, eyes are really clear.  We check lymph nodes underneath their jaw here and those look good…”

Race rules allow mushers to run up to 14 dogs.  That means the vets have about 350 dogs to look over.

McGill presses her fingers into the front of Copper’s shoulder, to the right of his chest and just below the base of his neck.

“Because sled dogs wear a harness, the harnesses can impact the point of the shoulder,” she explains.

Copper has a minor cut on his foot.  Berington recently ran him in another race across Alaska’a interior.  He’s wearing a maroon-colored bootie on his left front paw.

“Oh yeah.  Oh that’s coming along just fine,” says McGill as she looks over his paw.  “That looks good. He’s not limping on it or anything?”  Berington says he isn’t.  The bootie is just there for protection.

McGill says injuries like this are par for the course when it comes to long-distance sled dogs.  This will be her sixth year as the Quest’s head vet.

“The dogs can’t speak,” McGill explains. “They can howl and bark, but they can’t tell us where it hurts.  And so we as the veterinarian team are the advocates for the dogs.  The mushers know their dogs very, very well.  We know the medicine and so the two of us together can do what’s best for the dogs.”

Dog care is no joke for race officials.  Mushers can be disqualified from the race even before it starts if the animals aren’t in good health.

But that’s not a concern for four-time finisher Mike Ellis.  He and his wife Sue  won the Veterinarian’s Choice award for dog care after the 2011 Yukon Quest.

Mike Ellis comforts one of his dogs during a check up. Schwing/KUAC

“This is more coming in and showing them off,” says Ellis with a proud smile.  “The team just looks perfect.  They’re in great shape we don’t really have any issues.  They’re ready to go.”

That sense of readiness is exactly what McGill is looking for, but she calls it B.A.R.

“Bright, Alert, Reactive,” she confirms.  “f you have a your own pet dog, when you come home and that dogs greets you and is happy and is wagging his tail and wants to lick your face and he’s got bright eyes and is engaged with you, that’s what we’re looking for.  But if a dog is withdrawn, typically they don’t feel good, so then we’ve got to look for something else.”

McGill is just finishing up Copper’s checkup.

“We go back and check the back, make sure they have no fat on their back… he looks good, so he’s definitely  a five…”

That score, 5, is for overall body condition.

“So, on a scale of one to nine, nine being really obese, one being really skinny ready to die.  So, ideal is 4 or five in there somewhere with an athletic dog,” explains McGill.

After the physical, Copper’s paperwork is finalized so he can cross the Canadian Border.

All of Kristy Berington’s dogs checked out well, which calms the nerves of the 29 year old Wisconsin- native-turned Alaskan … for now.

“Yeah, everyday it gets closer to the race, cause you know food drops are due last week, so if I forgot something, oh well I’m just screwed,” she laughs nervously.  “And then now vet checks are out of the way and I only brought 14 dogs so if one didn’t pass for some bizarre reason, I would have had to start with 13 so it’s good to see that they all passed.  I didn’t have any doubts that they would and so that’s over and so next step we have is the drawing banquet .”

Rookie musher, Kristy Berington smiles during a vet check. Schwing/KUAC

This is one of the final events where mushers and race personnel come together before the race begins. All Yukon Quest rookies are required to attend the official race vet checks.  Veteran Quest mushers can have their own vets check their dogs.

photo courtesy of Yukon Quest. http://www.yukonquest.com/

In less than two weeks, dog teams will leave the Yukon Quest start chute from Fairbanks.  Race excitement was in the air Saturday, as mushers in Canada and Alaska handed their drop bags over to race personnel.  The bags are filled with everything teams will need along the 1000-mile race course.

In the early afternoon, veteran Yukon Quest musher Sonny Lindner pulled his truck and trailer into a parking lot in South Fairbanks to unload his drop bags for this year’s Yukon Quest International Sled Dog Race.

This will be his seventh Quest run.  Lindner says he hasn’t packed anything out of the ordinary in his drop bags this year.

“Well, there’s mostly dog food and then a little bit of people food and booties and runner plastic,” he says.

The Quest is nothing new for Lindner.  He was the first musher ever to have won the race, back in 1984.

“Well, what I like is my kennel’s right up there by Two Rivers,  and the trail goes right through the middle of my kennel.  So I like going out that way because the one time I tried coming back that way it didn’t work very well.”

The race starts in Fairbanks this year and travels southeast to Whitehorse, Canada.  Like Lindner, Fairbanks musher and Quest Rookie, Paige Drobny says her drop bags are mostly filled with dog food.

“Well, I guess I felt like I knew what I wanted in there,” she says, “I have seen a good portion of the trail, and so that makes it a little bit easier to know what to pack, but I definitely over-packed.  As a rookie, not knowing how the dogs are going to be after a certain amount of miles, so I definitely packed a lot of dog food,” laughs Drobny.

But for Brent Sass, there’s at least one ‘people food’ item he won’t mush without.

“Candied bacon,” he laughs.  “I gotta have that stuff.”

Josh Horst is the race manager for this year’s Yukon Quest.

“Man, it’s a really fun day,” he says.  “Today’s a really exciting day for us.  We get to see all the mushers for the first time.  It’s sort of the culmination of a lot of work coming together and this is sort of a reunion for us this is one of the first events where a lot of volunteers that we don’t see all year, this is one of the first places we see each other, so it’s a really fun day all in all.”

Today, Horst directs more than 20 volunteers.  They organize the drop bags on wooden pallets labeled with Quest Trail checkpoint names:  Central, Eagle, Braeburn.  Bags can’t weigh more than 40 pounds.  They’re all clearly labeled with the musher’s last name and the checkpoint where the bags will be dropped off.

“After that,” explains Horst, “they have to give us an inventory of what’s in each bag.  We need that for clearing customs when the bags cross into Canada.  And then it’s whatever they need in there.  It’s sort of up to their strategy, right?  They don’t want to carry more down the trail then they need, but they also want to make sure they have everything in there that they do need, so a lot of it just comes down to them.”

Preparation is important in the Yukon Quest, but so is efficiency.  Paige Drobny is confident she’ll find her bags among those of all the other mushers out on the trail.  A long, tentacled stencil is spray painted in hot pink above her last name.

“It’s a squid!” she laughs.  “Our kennel name is Squid Acres Kennel.  I did my master’s degree studying squid and it’s about the only thing I have left of that, so we put it on all the drop bags.”

The race staff has two weeks to get all the drops bags where they need to go.  Josh Horst admits the logistics can be challenging.

“It’s a tight timeline isn’t it? Yeah.  It’s pretty intense.  We’ve got a lot of work to get done,” he says.  “But of course we have a few more days for what has to happen on the Canadian side.  So some of those may get delivered a little be later because we don’t like to get ‘em into the communities too early, so we try to do everything a little last minute but pretty much everything on this side is gonna be done by about the 30^th or 31^st.”

Food drops also happened at the same time in Whitehorse Saturday.  In two weeks, 25 mushers will set out from Fairbanks for the 29^th running of the Yukon Quest.

This year’s Yukon Quest was dominated by extreme weather.  Champion and Rookie of the year, Dallas Seavey says he was lucky but that he is also very excited to have finally won a sled dog race after mushing his whole life.

Second place finisher, Sebastian Schnuelle usually hopes for bad weather, because he says it’s what makes him competitive, but at the banquet he said his attitude may have changed.

Most of the mushers at the finish banquet shared Schnuelle’s opinion, including third place finisher, Ken Anderson.

Some of the more candid words came from Tok musher, Hugh Neff, who led the race until a windstorm on Eagle Summit ended his run.  He says he will first and foremost always be a “Quest musher.”  But he also says the race itself may have to change.

Neff lost a dog during his ordeal on Eagle Summit. He says money donated to his kennel from the National Education Association of Alaska will go towards animal care at both the Fairbanks and Whitehorse animal shelters.

The Veterinarian’s Choice award given for the most outstanding dog care this year was presented to Mike Ellis and his wife Sue. Ellis says he works hard to make sure his purebred Siberian huskies are healthy and happy.

Silver gets a steak dinner

Race Marshall Hans Oetteli had no difficulty to present Wasilla musher Kelley Griffin with the Challenge of the north award.  Griffin says she can’t imagine living any other way than by the Code of the North.

Perhaps the most difficult vote was for the sportsmanship award.  From Dawson City on, mushers found themselves working together.  The vote ended in a three-way tie between Brent Sass, Mike Ellis and Allen Moore.  All three mushers agreed that almost everyone who participated this year, deserved recognition for their sportsmanship.

A new award was given at this year’s banquet… the Silver legacy award in honor of Brent Sass’s leader, Silver, who has led at least four teams to safety during his career.  Sass was presented with a portrait and Silver was given a steak dinner and a giant bowl filled with dog treats.  Sass calls Silver the “heart and soul” of his kennel.

Hank DeBruin

The evening ended with the arrival of Canadian musher Hank DeBruin and his nine Siberian huskies, who crossed the finish in time to claim the red lantern from race director, Marti Steury.

25 mushers left Whitehorse and headed for Fairbanks.  Nearly two weeks later, grueling trail conditions had tested even the toughest mushers and only 13 teams crossed the finish line in this the 28^th annual Yukon Quest.

Jodi Bailey smiles after finishing her race

The “three-pack” has finished the Yukon Quest.  The three teams worked together to finish the race, which is not unheard of for a race that incorporates the Code of the North and a feeling of camaraderie among mushers.

Halfway through the race, Jodi Bailey left Dawson almost four hours ahead of Mike Ellis and Dave Dalton.  But out on the Yukon River, the weather took a turn, and so did Bailey, and a few hours later, she found herself back at the Dawson dog camp just in time to catch Ellis and Dalton checking out.

The group of three mushers decided to head for the Alaskan border together and they have been running their teams more or less together ever since.  Despite traveling with two other teams, Mike Ellis says he never lost sight of the finish line.

For rookie Jodi Bailey, deciding when to race was based on a combination of weather and dog care.

Dave Dalton has run the Quest 21 times.  He may be the only musher that didn’t seem to think this year’s race was plagued by bad weather.

But Mike Ellis says he knew it was going to be bad when he watched trail markers blow past him in the wind.

Just because they were behind the leaders doesn’t mean Bailey, Ellis and Dalton didn’t also face a difficult trail in the second half of the race.  Ellis says the trail was challenging, but hearing about what was happening to some of his fellow mushers at the front of the pack was even worse.

Jodi Bailey's dogs look for snacks after finishing the race

Jodi Bailey says traveling in a group with two veterans was lucky, but she was still surprised by the parts of the race that she found most difficult.

All three mushers said that they had great teams running in this year’s race.  Bailey couldn’t pick just one or two.  Dave Dalton has been training puppies behind two nine year old leaders for the past two years.  He named almost every dog on his team as a superstar.  But Mike Ellis said there was one dog in particular on his team that deserves a steak after finishing the race.

Although a veteran to the Yukon Quest, Ellis says he is undecided about running it again next year.  Dave Dalton says he thinks his team of puppies is finally ready to be competitive in next year’s run.  Jodi Bailey will go on to run the 2011 Iditarod in March.

One of Kelley Griffin's dogs is ready for a nap after crossing the finish

Kelley Griffin and Allen Moore rounded out the pack of frontrunners in this year’s Yukon Quest.  They both crossed the finish line in the late afternoon and early evening on Wednesday.  There are still 6 teams to come across the line.  The next team is due in late in the evening Thursday.

Kelley Griffin has run the Yukon Quest 8 times.  The 51 year old musher is just shy of what she calls the “old lady record.”  She’ll have to run the race three more times to become the oldest woman to do so.

Griffin is a small, but tough woman with a warm personality and a distinct laugh.  She dedicated her race to her brother who passed away suddenly of pancreatic cancer.  At the start of this year’s race, she said he had always been her greatest supporter.

Griffin says she had some problems with the leadership on her team, after her only female went into heat just before the race began, but this year’s trail conditions may have provided her with a solution.

After a bad run up Eagle Summit in 2007, Griffin decided to train her team hard for the steep ascent.  She passed Allen Moore headed up the summit in this year’s race and also discovered a new leader on her team.

Kelley Griffin

Allen Moore, a self-described passionate athlete from Arkansas finished the race four and half hours after Griffin.  He says he was definitely impressed when Griffin’s leader sped past him, pulling her team up and over the summit so efficiently.

Moore ran the smallest dogs the Yukon Quest has seen.  He has three dogs on his team that weigh 34 pounds.  He says his dogs may be small, but it doesn’t slow them down.

This was Moore’s rookie run of the Yukon Quest.  He says he’s not sure if he will run it again… but he probably…  might.

Both Griffin and Moore will go on to run the Iditarod in March.  Only half the field has finished this year’s race and there is still plenty of exciting racing to come.

Race Marshall, Hans Oetteli sent a snow machine with rescue supplies for Neff and his team.  Neff returned to the checkpoint at mile marker 101 late Monday evening.  One of his dogs had expired during the day.

Results from the necropsy show that the dog, Geronimo, suffered from aspiration asphyxia.  Essentially, contents of the stomach got into the dog’s lungs and he asphyxiated.

Head Veterinarian, Al Hallman says that this is not a rare occurrence in dogs that race long distances.

The necropsy showed no sign of abuse or neglect.

Seavey's sled at the dog camp in Dawson, halfway through the race.

At 23, Dallas Seavey is the youngest musher to win the Yukon Quest.  He is also the youngest musher to have run the Iditarod. On the podium, he told the crowd that this was not his biggest race, but he was pleased with a win.

From the beginning, Dallas Seavey was adamant that he was only running the Yukon Quest to condition his dogs for a successful race in this year’s Iditarod.  When he crossed the finished line, he seemed to think he’d met his goal.

Even in the dog yard in back in Dawson, half way through the race, Seavey said he might try to drop some time and place, but he was really just trying to run a smart race.

The 23 year old Wasilla* musher is also an Olympic calliber wrestler.  He also comes from a seeming mushing Dynasty, which likely put Seavey in a good position to perform well in the Yukon Quest.

He also credits his win to having a versatile dog team.

This year’s prize purse is roughly $150 thousand dollars.  Seavey will win 19 percent of it – which adds up to a little over $28 thousand dollars.  The top 15 finishers win prize money.  With only 14 teams left in this year’s race, everyone will take something home.

[*editor's note: Seavey is from Willow, not Wasilla]

Sass's (left) and Schnuelle's (right) teams rest at Two Rivers

The drama continues in this year’s Yukon Quest. A time penalty are now part of the mix and with one last run, the race for the finish will be tight.

Sebastian Schnuelle was first into the checkpoint at mile marker 101 on the Steese Highway.  He had cleared Eagle Summit successfully, but not without losing some of his comrades to gusting winds and blowing snow.

Schnuelle concedes that conditions in this year’s Yukon Quest have been very trying.

Race Marshall Hans Oetteli decreased the penalty to a half hour

Race Marshall Hans Oetelli has been working with the Yukon Quest for over 20 years.    He says this year’s race has been very dramatic in comparison to past years.

While his competitors napped at Two Rivers – the final checkpoint before the finish line – Brent Sass visited with race volunteers and his dad, Mark.  He says this has been his bets Quest yet.

Sass also says mushers this year have faced some serious challenges.

The finish line lies 87 miles from the Two Rivers checkpoint.  Ken Anderson will be the first to leave.  Because of the spread between the frontrunners and the back of the pack, there is still plenty  of racing left and possibly a little more drama before the red lantern is awarded.

The view of Eagle Summit from a car

This year’s Yukon Quest has been marked with a series of serious challenges – a blizzard on American summit, severe overflow on Birch Creek – and now Eagle summit.  The field was greatly narrowed on Monday.  The remaining teams are currently en route to cross the Eagle summit in the next few days.

Eagle Summit is one of the few sections of trail that is notorious for testing even the toughest musher.

Everyone at 101 had been awaiting Hugh Neff all day.  Extremely cold temperatures have caused the GPS trackers to malfunction.  When Neff didn’t show and his tracker wasn’t reporting a reliable location, race officials sent a snow machine out to check on him.

Back in Circle, Hugh Neff said Eagle Summit was in the back of his mind, because of an experience he had back in 2009.

Neff had to leave his leader, Walter behind in Central after the dog was submerged in the overflow.  By the time Neff had reached Eagle summit it appears his race had unraveled.  He returned to the 101 checkpoint on snowmachine, with an expired dog.  He was unavailable for comment but Race Marshall Hans Oetteli said both Dan Kaduce’s team and Ken Anderson’s team had tried to help Neff cross over.

Eagle Summit appears to have also gotten the best of Dan Kaduce, who lives and trains less than 100 miles from the summit.  Back in Dawson he had said he wasn’t worried about it.

The Checkpoint at 101

But Kaduce may have underestimated the challenge.  He was also missing his parka, which he’d forgotten back at Slaven’s Roadhouse.  Early Monday evening, three gentlemen walked into the mushers cabin at mile marker 101.  They said they had just dropped off a musher they had picked up along the highway.  It was Kaduce.  He was also unavailable for comment, Race Marshall Hans Oetteli explained that Kaduce was very dehydrated and resting.

The first musher over the summit was 2009 Yukon Quest Champion, Sebastian Schnuelle.  As he swallowed down strips of bacon, Schnuelle warned reporters that the race is not over yet.

Schnuelle says he’s not surprised harsh conditions and Eagle summit claimed some of the race’s top competitors.  He credits his success to experience.

Just as Schnuelle was relishing the idea of a long rest at 101, Ken Anderson blew through the checkpoint, filling his pockets with granola bars and his mouth with eggs and bacon simultaneously.  He really didn’t have time to talk.

The trail leading out of 101 towards Rosebud Summit

Brent Sass has a different attitude about the more challenging portions of the Yukon Quest trail.  He loves the most difficult parts of the trail.  And he trusts his lead dog, Silver when the weather changes.  Back in Eagle, he said the blizzard he weatherd on top of American Summit hadn’t changed his race.  In fact it was exactly what he’d hoped for.

While he quickly checked in and out of 101, Sass said everything went as planned.

After leaving 101, teams will cross a second summit  -Rosebud at 3,640 feet – and make their way down to the final checkpoint before the finish line.

The dog will be taken to Fairbanks, where Dr. Chris Christensen, also a Yukon Quest veterinarian, from the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology will perform a necropsy.  Results will be released in the next few days.